Steve Barth | Reflexions

Knowledge wants to be very, very expensive

There’s a paradox at the heart of knowledge management, isn’t there? On one hand, it’s the old dictum that “information wants to be free” and the new ditty that “knowledge shared is knowledge doubles.” But on the other, the whole premise of KM and the whole knowledge economy thingy is that organizational learning and knowledge are the most valuable resources that any company (or nation or individual) can posses for a competitive edge.

Which brings me to my extremely mixed feelings about the release of Ark Group’s Next Generation Knowledge Management, Volume 2. It’s an amazing collection of collective and collaborative wisdom, based on the Association of Knowledge Work’s Star Series online roundtables featuring Bob Buckman, David Gurteen, Patti Anklam, Carl Frappaolo, Megan Santosus, Verna Allee, Nancy Dixon, Rob Lebow, Nick Milton and others.

Dave Snowden and I anchored the first confab-turned-chapter. The June 2004 online event, “Comparing and Contrasting Corporate and Personal KM” was ostensibly a “debate” between the individual perspective of bottom-up personal knowledge management and the complex socially-oriented collectivist approach. There was little debate really, but a wonderful symphony on the symbiotic relationship between the organism and the organization. (You can get a flavor of the discussion from my closing remarks.)

Complexity and Evolution

By the way, one of the parasitologists Carl Zimmer interviewed for Parasite Rex was Dr. Daniel R. Brooks a very cool biologist I met at Pedro Sotolongo’s complexity conference in Havana a few years ago. Dan is brilliant on ways in which evolutionary theory intersects with concepts in complexity, self-organization and information theories.

The Journeys of Crow

One day I was scanning a review of a backpacking products and stumbled on “As The Crow Flies” written from a remote solar-powered cabin in the woods somewhere. Suddenly, I took the day off and devoured every one of Crow’s entries from end to beginning, piecing together the puzzle of a fascinating, uncompromising life from only occasional clues—someone who has gone into the woods to live very, very deliberately, telling compelling stories with insight, simplicity and grace in words, photos and drawings.

As spring approaches I turn my attention to what this year’s adventure will be. This has been the winter of the blog and Netflix DVD’s. I’m thinking about this summer being yet another PCT thru-hike. When I start thinking about being back on that trail my body starts humming and vibrating. A part of me thinks that that would be the best thing to do this summer. Another part of me remembers how hard it is: the heat, the pain, the stinking horses and their obnoxious riders, the cold and the rain, bear worries, etc. How can something so hard be so alluring? I think it must be something in a person’s intrinsic programming that makes some people want to start roaming as spring nears where as others start thinking about planting a garden.

—Feb. 11, 2007 “Some people plant, some people gather”

Crow is a long distance hiker, and next month will begin a new pilgrimage up the Pacific Crest Trail. So you will have time to catch up.

I don’t have to blog

I’m an unreliable blogger. Fortunately, there are amazing narratives floating on the aether, like Riverbend’s “Baghdad Burning” is the award-winning girl blog about war, politics, and other teenage preoccupations in the new Iraq.

A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted….